As Lizzie caught and tried to hold him the thin night-shirt ripped in her fingers, laying bare the small back from shoulder to buttock.
They were woman to woman now; cast back into savagery and blindly groping for its primitive weapons.

Honoria crossed the floor not knowing what she meant to do, or might do.

Lizzie sprang to defence against she knew not what.

But when her enemy advanced, towering, with a healthy boy dragging at her skirts, she did the one thing she could--turned with a swift cry back upon her own crippled child and caught at the bed-clothes to cover and hide his naked deformity.
While she crouched and shielded him, silence fell on the room.
She had half expected Honoria to strike her; but no blow came, nor any sound.

By-and-by she looked up.